What a...

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So, Sunak's mentalist National Service concept for our eighteen-year-olds idea is, to quote most of the media coverage on the thing, '...meant to appeal to the over-65s...'. I'm now approaching seventy, and neither am I a Tory voter - see just about any of my blog posts for confirmation of that simple fact - or anywhere old enough to have had any direct experience of the post-war National Service Programme that they imagine our demographic will be nostalgically be misty-eyed about: I was still at junior school when they got shut of the damned thing, fer chrissakes. As far as I can remember, the previous generation weren't exactly keen on the idea of peacetime conscription either, largely making themselves as useless as possible at whatever allotted tasks or rôles they were assigned to, if so conscripted. Any hopes he has of winning over the legions of socialist pensioners such as us - and all of our social ambit - are doomed to failure, as I would rather string myself up than vote Conservative. Methinks he has misread and mis-stepped yet again...

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